Zimbabwe militants seize farm of Commercial
Farmers' Union president

Zanu PF militants have
invaded the farm of Commercial Farmers' Union president Trevor Gifford,
saying he is never to return home.

Mr Gifford, who has spent a
frantic week in Harare trying to assist at least 60 fellow farmers cope with
their own invasions around the country was not at home near Chipinge, about
220 miles south east of Harare, when the mob of about 30 wearing Zanu-PF
T-shirts arrived at his security gate.

"They have left messages
with staff for me that they are taking over the farm and will manage the
livestock with some of my workers," Mr Gifford said.

Mr Gifford
has endured many previous invasions and his mature coffee crop and more than
two-thirds of his macadamia and avocado plantation on about 600 acres have
been destroyed by invaders and new farmers since President Robert Mugabe
began seizing white owned farms in 2000.

He is presently running
200 cattle, mostly for his brother who was also evicted by Mr Mugabe's
supporters, and a small dairy on the old family farm,
Wolverhampton.

"They shouted that the state owns my farm now," he
said.

Most of his land was handed over to Mr Mugabe's supporters
but they failed to grow enough crops to feed their families and will need
emergency food aid this year.

White commercial farmers have
been under huge pressure and some have had their homes, crops and equipment
destroyed or taken over this week as Zanu-PF claims that the Movement for
Democratic Change would return land to evicted white farmers, most of whom
left Zimbabwe and settled overseas.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of
the MDC, who most analysts believe delivered a humiliating defeat to Mr
Mugabe in the presidential election has said there would be no reversal of
the "land reform" programme begun by Mr Mugabe in 2000 which saw about 4,000
white farmers deprived of their land, homes and businesses.

Results for the presidential poll have been delayed although they were
available to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission on March 31.

Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa said that there would be a pre-result
recount of the presidential poll even before the results are
delivered.

Latest Wave Of Zimbabwe Farm Invasions Seen Further Crippling
Economy

The latest wave of farm takeovers in Zimbabwe,
coming as the harvest season is just getting under way, could exacerbate
food shortages in the country, experts warn.

Veterans of the
country's 1980s liberation war and youth militia of the ZANU-PF party of
President Robert Mugabe have descended in recent days on many of the
estimated 450 farms that were still in white hands following the chaotic
land reform process that Mr. Mugabe launched in 2000, crippling the
country's agricultural sector.

Farm seizures around Centenary,
Mashonaland Central, where farmers specialize in tobacco, could cost the
country US$10 million in foreign exchange, sources said.

Farmers
elsewhere could lose their crops, including already scarce
maize.

Agricultural expert Roger Mpande told reporter Carole Gombakomba
of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that the farm invasions are likely to have a
serious impact on the food supply, as farmers were coming into the peak
harvest season for staple maize.

Politically inspired violence was
reported on farms in Manicaland Province. The Center for Research and
Development in Mutare, capital of the province, said ruling party youth
militia assaulted farm workers in retribution for the party's election
losses.

Members of the organization Justice for Agriculture, which
represents displaced white farmers, and human rights activists, have
expressed the fear that thousands of farm workers may be evicted from their
homes amid the crackdown on white farmers.

With an average of 100-200
workers employed on each white-operated farm, sources said the number of
those displaced could mount into the hundreds of thousands.

'Vote Mugabe or you die'. Inside Zimbabwe, the backlash begins

President's
men launch campaign of violence and intimidation against MDC
supporters

Chris McGreal in MutokoThe Guardian,Thursday April
10 2008

The patients at Louisa Guidotti hospital said there were eight
men, one carrying a shotgun, another with an AK-47, others with pistols, and
they went from bed to bed forcing out anyone who could walk.

Nurses
were dragged away from the sick. Motorists driving by the hospital, 87 miles
north-east of Harare, were stopped and taken from their cars.

About 70
people were gathered in the grounds. Then the lecture began. "This is your
last chance," said one of the armed men. "You messed up when you voted. Next
time you vote you must get it right or you will die."

One of the men
selected people to stand and shout slogans of Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF
party and to sing songs from the liberation war . Those who did not do so
enthusiastically were beaten. Another cocked his gun and told the crowd to
point out opposition supporters.

Sandati Kuratidzi lives on the hospital
grounds because his wife is a physiotherapist there. He is an activist with
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change which stunned Zanu-PF by
apparently defeating Robert Mugabe in the presidential election, although
the electoral commission has still to release the official result 12 days
later.

When Kuratidzi saw the pick-up with the armed men draw up, he knew
what was coming and hid on top of a cupboard.

"They warned people
that if they voted for the opposition they would be killed. They had AK-47s,
shotguns, guns in their belts. People were very afraid," he said. "They were
saying they were going to show an example to anyone supporting MDC and they
asked the people to point out who they were but no one did. Their behaviour
was inhuman."

Then the men piled back into their truck and set off for
the next village.

Mugabe has unleashed his shock troops, Zanu-PF's
militias and those who call themselves liberation war veterans even though
most are too young to have fought it, in an undeclared campaign of terror
against rural voters in advance of an expected second round of presidential
elections.

The violence and intimidation that helped deliver perverted
election victories to Zanu-PF three and six years ago were absent from the
presidential and parliamentary ballot on March 29, and Mugabe lost. Now they
are returning with a vengeance and the ruling party is using results from
the first round as a guide to where to exert pressure.

Across
provinces such as Mashonaland, Manicaland and Matabeleland, where the
opposition campaigned freely for the first time and made strong inroads into
Zanu-PF's support, armed gangs move from village to village, forcing people
to meetings and threatening dire consequences if the vote goes against
Mugabe again. Opposition supporters are identified and beaten or driven from
their homes.

The MDC said Mugabe, who during the election campaign
said he regarded it as a war, was delaying the release of the presidential
ballot in order to wage his terror campaign before a run-off is formally
declared and foreign monitors return. The opposition said it feared the
threats were working.

The intimidation is following a pattern seen in
earlier elections. It began with assaults on scores of white-owned farms at
the weekend. War veterans drove white families from their land as Mugabe
once again sought to characterise the election as a struggle against British
imperialism. But the assault on the white farmers is a cover for a broader
campaign against black voters. The MDC has made public a document it said
was from a disaffected senior military officer listing the deployment of 200
army officers to coordinate the strategy on the ground.

Louisa
Guidotti hospital is in Mutoko East constituency in Mashonaland East, once a
Mugabe stronghold where Abel Samakande was the MDC's parliamentary
candidate. Samakande lost but made strong inroads into traditional Zanu-PF
territory, picking up about 42% of the vote.

Now that achievement is
coming back to haunt those who supported him. He said the first indication
he had of the return of the terror tactics was when he was tipped off by
friends in Zanu-PF that he was being hunted.

"They told us there was a
meeting at which it was decided to eliminate one of the local MDC leaders.
Our friends in Zanu-PF warned us not to sleep in our houses, to move in
groups," he said. Then he had a call telling him that armed men had
descended on the village of Matsande.

"When we heard about these armed
men we went to the police for assistance. The officer in charge said he
could not help," said Samakande.

The MDC candidate headed to Matsande,
but by the time he reached it, the men with guns had done their work and
moved on to the hospital and then the village of Mushimbo. "On the way they
got to a township where they forced all the shops to close and forced
everybody to a meeting," he said. "When I got home I was told by my wife
there were men who came to the place. She kept the door locked and they
left. We decided not to sleep there for fear of our
lives."

Yesterday, other armed men backed by Zanu-PF activists went to
Mutoko and forced people to a meeting. A man in the crowd identified two MDC
supporters. They were marched to the front and beaten so badly that they
were left with broken bones. The group then went to the houses of known MDC
supporters and chased them from the town.

It is a pattern repeated
across Mashonaland in the north to parts of Matabeleland in the south, where
about 60 families were expelled from their homes in Insiza yesterday after
Zanu-PF identified them as having voted for the MDC from the election count
for their local polling station.

In Gweru, opposition supporters have
been attacked by soldiers, according to the Zimbabwe Peace Project.
"Soldiers descended on unsuspecting revellers in bars and late night
shoppers, beating them up. The soldiers were allegedly saying the people's
crime among other things was that they did not vote correctly," said the
ZPP. In Mutare, gangs armed with whips and knives have been going house to
house in search of MDC supporters. In Manicaland, at least one activist has
been killed. In Chimanimani East, opposition supporters have been burned
from their homes.

Milton Kanomakuyo,the MDC parliamentary candidate for
Mudzi South in Mashonaland, was taking his nine-year-old daughter to
hospital on Tuesday when he was stopped by a friend. "He told me he saw
Zanu-PF milling around, stopping people, hunting for known MDC activists,"
Kanomakuyo said. "In the evening a guy who works for the ministry of
education who was an election officer in Mudzi South came to my shop and
told me about these people: eight war vets with AK-47s in Mazda pick-up
trucks."

The armed men had already visited Kotwa. "They ordered people
out of buses, out of shops, gathered them together," he added. "One of the
men was cocking a rifle to scare people. They told the people they'd messed
up by voting MDC and they weren't going to let people make that mistake
again. They said they wouldn't entertain even one opposition vote. They told
people to shout slogans and those who couldn't do it were
slapped.

"When they were campaigning, they were telling people over and
over again that if Zanu-PF loses there will be a war. Now they are reminding
them."

Samakande said the threats to kill opponents showed the MDC as
powerless and would cost its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, in a second round
election. "When they give you a warning people take it seriously. If we are
going to have a run-off we will not win and it's going to be bloody because
they know in a free and fair environment they will not
win."

Kanomakuyo agreed: "A friend in the police said to me that if we go
for the run-off the villagers will be afraid to vote for the MDC. I think
they will be. I'm sure they are going to do this for quite some time. By the
time the results come out people will be terrified. It's going to be
difficult to stop this. If we try to do mass action definitely it will be
crushed."

Voting intimidation

Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 3:03 AM

Subject: zimbabwe situation

I was directly involved at the polling stations in 1980 when Mugabe was handed
the jewel of Africa on a silver plate. To say the level of intimidation was
alarming is an understatement, when terrified and illiterate people presented to
me their blank polling form, incapable of completing it, while gesturing with
trembling hands, Jongwe! Jongwe! (the cock or rooster, for Magabe's ZANU-PF
party). Some 4 weeks earlier, our camp stonghold in the Mondoro tribal trust
lands, broke into mayhem one night when thousands of innocent villagers poured
in from the surrounding areas, seeking sanctuary from Mugabe's so-called
'freedom fighters, in a reign of pre-election terror:

And the World ,
lambasted by the-then Britich Government, believed the election had been free
and fair, such was the charm and charisma of Lord Carrington and his cronies.

28 years later, we still live with this bastard, a stark daily reminder
that pure evil still lingers in the World, and yet the World remains paralysed,
too unsure and too pathetic to take a firm hand and rid the maggot from it's
unwilling host. Of note is the deafening silence from the South Africa, who
cannot say a bad thing about Robert Gabriel Mugabe. We are most grateful that
Jacob Zuma has the guts and the fortitude to speak out, and in this light, there
is a glimmer of hope that perhaps democracy will be served and this
despot-from-hell, turfed out and dealt with in the real World where justice does
prevail.

When will this travesty of justice end, that my friends is the
question.

Police top brass "divert" wages, claim

The Zimbabwean

Wednesday, 09 April 2008 15:29Promised salaries never arrived
BY CHIEF REPORTERHARAREThe police force, crucial to Robert
Mugabe's continued stranglehold on power in Zimbabwe, are demoralised after
Government failed to pay them for election related work, The Zimbabwean can
reveal.Special constabulary officers and regular members of the
Zimbabwe Republic Police are livid over Government's failure to pay them the
promised Z$3bn in the 10 days they have worked, starting three days prior to
the March 29 poll.The Zimbabwean understands that the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission (ZEC) made cash available to the Director of Finance in
the Home Affairs ministry at Mukwati Building. The cash cascaded down to the
line commanders, but then disappeared, leaving a dispirited police
force.Senior police officers and other regular members told The
Zimbabwean this week that of the Z$3bn, they were only paid Z$900m on March
27 and promised the rest after 10 days. But with Mugabe desperately clinging
to power, this period has been extended, and their payments have been
withheld. The officers say that the longer the cash is withheld, the more
its value is shrinking due to hyperinflation and the collapse of the
currency.The original billions were awarded to lure officers for
election work following alarming reports of resignations and others going
absent without leave.A senior officer said the top brass had
"diverted" money meant to pay officers to the black market.The
Zimbabwean heard that only officers under the Police Protection Unit, tasked
with security for VIPs, had been paid in full.What has exacerbated the
situation is that no officer has been allowed to stand down and have
remained in police camps as a standby force.t Morris Depot,
Thomlinson, Chitungwiza and Braeside, officers were angry over the late
payment. Officers said they would not quash any rebellion by people because
of non-payment."I can't be used to assault my brothers and sisters in
support of a regime that has failed to pay me," charged an angry regular
member of the force, speaking on condition of anonymity.Efforts to
obtain comment from the deputy police commissioner responsible for
operations, Innocent Matibiri, failed. But Claudius Makova, the Zanu (PF) MP
who chaired the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on defence in the last
parliament, warned that the financial situation in the defence forces had
severe implications for national security.

Mugabe won just 25 per cent, says Waruiru

The Zimbabwean

Wednesday, 09 April 2008 15:33BY STAFF REPORTER
HARAREMorgan Tsvangirai and the MDC won the election by such a large
margin, Robert Mugabe is struggling to rig himself back into power,
according to founder of the African Conservative Forum, Mukui
Waruiru."Mugabe is already illegally in power, having lost the 2002
election, but by a narrower margin than he lost this time," said Waruiru.
"In 2002, some of Mugabe's more honest supporters in Africa conceded that
although he lost the election, he received at least 45 per cent of the vote,
which was close enough to allow manipulation of the results to manufacture a
narrow victory."This time, though, Waruiru said reports from his
sources in Harare indicated Mugabe had won no more than 25 per cent of the
vote."The first order of business should be to protect the Zimbabwean
people from violence from Mugabe's security forces, should the people decide
to protest the theft of the election," he said. "The US and the EU should
make it absolutely clear that any commander of the Zimbabwean security
forces who gives orders for the shooting of protesters will be indicted
before the international criminal court. Also, every individual policeman or
soldier in Zimbabwe who obeys an order to shoot protesters, should be held
personally liable for his criminal act, and will be punished in an
international court."

Military junta takes over

The Zimbabwean

Wednesday, 09
April 2008 15:35*JOC now in control *Generals desperate to save their
skinsBY CHIEF REPORTERHARARETerrified of people
power, as demonstrated by Zimbabweans' use of their vote on March 29, the
nation's fabulously wealthy and corrupt security force generals have
surreptitiously seized power and established a de facto military junta with
President Robert Mugabe as its head.Senior generals, who for years
have been contemptuous of the law and human rights, announced before the
poll that they would not accept an opposition victory. As it became
apparent, despite mammoth efforts to rig a Zanu (PF) victory, that Morgan
Tsvangirai and his MDC had won the election, the generals swung into
action.In connivance with the Zanu (PF) regime, the Joint Operations
Command, JOC, quietly took control of Zimbabwe on the Sunday after the poll,
as soon as news of MDC's victory began to leak out.They
immediately began orchestrating the release of the results through the Zanu
(PF)-appointed Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).Official sources
said the JOC was using special powers under the Constitution to assume the
powers of the president.During the past two weeks the JOC has used its
authority to impose a blackout on election results that give Tsvangirai a
clear victory, instructed the judiciary not to hear an opposition court
action to compel the release of the results, and ordered the arrest of
electoral officials to justify the delay.Using results posted
outside individual polling stations, the MDC says Tsvangirai won 50.3 per
cent of the vote against Mugabe's 42, 8 making him the country's next
leader.But JOC, which has put all senior ZEC officials under
surveillance, said it had evidence that Mugabe had been cheated in 16
constituencies and wants a recount."We will purge ZEC," threatened
Zanu (PF) administration secretary Didymus Mutasa. "There is no way we can
conduct elections with thieves."Sources told The Zimbabwean that the
de facto coup by JOC had been endorsed at last week's politburo
meeting.JOC had been tasked with taking charge of the "delicate
situation" but would hand power back to Mugabe once things had stabilized.
The octogenarian leader was expected to appoint an interim administration
that would oversee a run-off of the presidential poll.The
opposition has warned that Mugabe would use Section 29 of the Constitution
to invoke his presidential powers (temporary measures) regulations to
postpone the run-off election date for 90 days.Armed troops and riot
police have taken strategic positions across the capital, but life appears
normal on the streets of Zimbabwe's cities.The military junta is
believed to have ordered the nation's largest state-owned daily newspaper,
the Herald, to cede editorial control to Mugabe's official spokesman, George
Charamba.Diplomatic sources said the African Union (AU) Peace and
Security Council could be asked to use military force to end the standoff if
Mugabe insisted on subverting the will of the people using force. UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week urged ZEC to release the results
"expeditiously and with transparency."US State Department
spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington that the release was
"overdue."In a fiery statement, Tsvangirai condemned regional leaders
for their failure to speak out against Mugabe.Commercial Farmers'
Union spokesman Trevor Gifford said 23 farms were besieged on Monday by mobs
of pro-Mugabe war veterans and militia. But Wilfred Mhanda, chairman of the
independent Zimbabwe Liberators Platform, said the issue of land was "an
exhausted platform. It has no takers."

Workers and jobless targeted by new Zanu
campaign

The Zimbabwean

Wednesday, 09 April 2008 15:28BY CHIEF
REPORTERHARAREThe ruling Zanu (PF) party needs to mobilise
the working class and unemployed youths to ensure a landslide victory in the
presidential election run-off, a senior Zanu (PF) official has
said.Zanu (PF) Secretary for Information and Publicity, Nathan
Shamuyarira, said it was unfortunate that a lot of workers had been fooled
into thinking that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had
their interests at heart. The party had nothing to offer to the workers
because Britain, employers and the Commercial Farmers Union were controlling
it, he claimed.He stressed that the ruling party needed to win back
the support of working people in the towns who voted for the MDC during the
first round of voting on March 29."As we head towards the
presidential election run-off, we take cognisance of the fact that we have
been through a momentous year. We need to gear ourselves to advance our
position and defend our interests," Shamuyarira said.He said the
ZEC had stolen the election in MDC's favour and said the ruling party was
demanding a recount in 16 constituencies. He said there was no way ZEC could
be allowed to announce flawed election results.Zanu (PF)
Administration Secretary Didymus Mutasa said: "We will purge ZEC. There is
no way we can conduct elections with thieves." He said Zanu (PF) was
demanding a recount before election results could be announced. He added
that results in 16 constituencies were "suspect".Mutasa spoke as High
Court judge Justice Tendai Uchena postponed for the fourth time in a row the
hearing of a petition by the MDC seeking a court order compelling the ZEC to
release presidential election results immediately.

Fake MDC letter by Zanu-PF exposed

By Our Correspondent

HARARE:
April 10, 2008 (thezimbabwetimes.com) - The Movement for Democratic Change,
MDC says it has discovered a fake letter purporting to have emanated from
the office of the party’s secretary general, Tendai Biti.

The 13 page
document claims to outline a transitional strategy for the MDC “should we
get more than 60 percent of the vote on the first round”.

The document
which, according to Biti, was doctored from a letter once signed on his
behalf by Toendepi Shonhe.

Among other things, the fake letter claims the
MDC had plans to “take our campaign right inside the polling
stations.

“We are also talking to teachers and other civil servants who
are being recruited by ZEC to play various roles, especially at the polling
stations. Many of these are accepting our offers of between ZW$3 billion and
ZW$50 billion each so that they exploit any available opportunity to
overstate our votes. With these measures in place, the landslide we are
seeking is a distinct possibility.”

The letter also claims the MDC
had plans to invite United States President George Bush, British leader
Gordon Brown and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Reads the
allegedly fictional letter: “The swearing in will be done by the Chief
Justice at State House and this must be planned in some detail. We have
already sent invitations to President Bush, Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
Prime Minister Kelvin Rudd, Chancellor Angela Merkel and our international
partners and other key stakeholders in the People's Project. Soon after the
swearing in, President Tsvangirai will immediately take occupation of the
President's Office and State House. Our British friends have already taken
the President, his wife and the rest of the first family through a crash
course on ethics, etiquette and basic protocol associated with this high
office.

“Our international partners also continue to send us their
assurances that they will guarantee our assumption of power, including with
force of arms if need be.”

Biti said the fake letter and the
deployment of armed forces was part of a Zanu-PF strategy “to steal our
dignity”.

“It is quiet clear Zanu-PF are desperate to reverse the
people’s decision on the 29th of March,” said Biti.

Gono a lynchpin in Mugabe’s new survival strategy

By Greatman
MoyoApril 9, 2008

POLITICAL aspirant and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
(RBZ) Governor Gideon Gono has been sucked into Zimbabwe’s contentious issue
concerning the much postponed announcement of the presidential election
results.

There has been much speculation – revelation as well – that Gono
has become one of a cabal of people urging President Robert Mugabe to hold
out for a run-off, in the aftermath of March 29 presidential
election.

The historic elections have turned out to be a cliffhanger for
Mugabe and Zanu-PF – both in terms of its outcome in the House of Assembly
and the inexplicable delay in the announcement of the result of the
presidential election, which the octogenarian leader is now widely believed
to have lost. Already, Zanu-PF has lost its parliamentary majority to Morgan
Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.

Against the background
of such a scenario and stalemate, a group of Mugabe loyalists including
Zimbabwe Defence Forces chief Constantine Chiwenga, police
commissioner-general Augustine Chihuri, Rural Housing Minister Emmerson
Mnangagwa, Zanu-PF security boss Nicholas Goche, Justice Minister, Patrick
Chinamasa and Gono is understood to be strongly lobbying the beleaguered
President to stay on and fight it out with Tsvangirai in a run-off already
dogged by procedural problems.

Gono, like many in this coterie of
self-seeking politicians, is bitterly opposed to any MDC takeover not only
because it exposes him to possible prosecution over his many alleged corrupt
activities at the central bank, but also because it dashes his own obvious
political ambitions since Mugabe.

The clearest indication yet of Gono’s
disdain of Tsvangirai is a spurious story in Monday’s Herald, which alleged
a German takeover of the Zimbabwean central bank under Tsvangirai, yet
inter-governmental technical co-operation has been a widespread practice
worldwide since time immemorial.

Apart from comforting the 84-year-old
president, Gono has already started oiling Mugabe’s re-election bid by
availing unlimited amounts of cash for such projects as the printing of two
million t-shirts for what could be a “bloody campaign”, given that Zanu PF
has re-activated its shock-troopers in the form of liberation war
veterans.

“Gono is using his access to the president to urge him to stay
on. That’s despite the folly of the (re-election) project, however. Really,
he is one of a few who has access to Mugabe right now, but are currently
engaged in futile endeavours,” says a source close to the Reserve Bank
Governor, adding it was ironic that Gono was now playing “the president’s
best buddy” yet it was his acerbic policies that had cost Zanu PF the
election.

Among the notoriously insipid and unpopular policies was Gono’s
“wait and see” attitude at the height of 2006’s cash crisis that galvanised
the anger of the people against Mugabe’s government. His highly-inflationary
money-printing antics also proved to be problematic as well as adding
resentment.

It was also incomprehensible that Mugabe could entrust
his re-election and survival to the likes of Gono, Chinamasa and others who
crafted the 51 percent presidential-poll majority clause that has now
delivered Mugabe to the altar of political judgement.

“The problem is
that the despot aligns himself with sycophants, yet they could be working
him from within. An analysis of the characters involved would show you that
they were taught only in the wor(l)d of deception and backbiting, and the
result would be interesting really,” said the source, refreshing the
widely-held view on Gono’s duplicity that has also seen him funding both
Zanu PF and the opposition since 2000. In fact, it is believed that he
provided vehicles to Tsvangirai’s campaign this year, as a way of “reaching
out for amnesty” should the latter win.

In the meantime, Mugabe’s running
dogs led by Chihuri, Chinamasa and Goche are stepping up an assault on
democracy and the people’s will by preparing a legal process to challenge
some of the “House of Assembly seats” won by Tsvangirai’s MDC. Informed
government insiders say while the plot is entirely a “Dinyane gang” idea –
bankrolled wholesale by Gono – the arrest of Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
(ZEC) staffers was a precursor or prelude to that evil plan.

Apart
from gunning for Tsvangirai, Gono is involved in a parallel process to
impose himself as a major political player and power broker, which would see
him emerge as prime minister, or at the very least finance minister, in
whatever dispensation or structure that comes out of this post-March 29
impasses or standoff.

Such an appointment (in whatever capacity) and
Zanu PF’s intended constitutional tinkering as well as “bribery plan” in the
coming parliament would not only “give him a foot” in the key arm(s) of
government, but set him to assume the presidency when Mugabe finally departs
the political scene or stage. This is according to a secret pact between
Gono and the elderly despot.

News of Gono’s involvement in
clandestine moves to preserve the status quo also come amid charges that he
ran a “command centre” on Saturday, March 29 with presidential spokesman and
Ministry of Information, and Publicity permanent secretary George
Charamba.

The purpose of the unofficial centre was allegedly to
co-ordinate rigging efforts while distorting the election tally as well as
coaxing Mugabe to unilaterally declare himself the winner of the election
long before George Chiweshe’s powerless ZEC could proclaim the bona fide
winner.

However, their efforts came to naught when it became evident that
Zanu-PF and Mugabe were tumbling to a defeat, amid use or application of the
more transparent SADC guidelines and principles on election monitoring as
well as operation.

Gono and Charamba’s operation of a command centre
also flies in the face of security agents’ move to arrest MDC officials,
particularly Tendai Biti, Nelson Chamisa and George Sikhotshiwe for running
“an illegal information centre” from the day of the elections. That Gono has
not been questioned, observers said, showed his power to operate above the
law – a trait grossly rampant throughout his tenure.

Apart from the
unholy electoral/political alliance, Gono and Charamba’s illicit
relationship also runs into commercial exploits, where the former provided
up to Z$50 billion in 2005 to Mugabe acerbic spokesman in so-called
agricultural or farming loans, particularly a poultry project in Charamba’s
Buhera home district.

The pair also co-operated extensively during
the 2004 Tsholotsho debacle, with Gono providing ample funding to the palace
coup plot meant to benefit Mnangagwa.

However, the most disconcerting
issue is not only Gono’s involvement in State machinations to keep Mugabe in
power at all costs, but also abuse of his RBZ office and resources to pursue
his succession agenda. So serious and intense is Gono’s assault on power
that he is even involved in covert operations to destroy political foes such
as Simba Makoni, and his Mavambo project, with the biggest high-profile
casualty of this Zanu-PF’s factional fallout being intelligence director
general Happyton Bonyongwe.

Despite the fact they were key allies in many
respects, it was learned last week that Gono and other Mugabe lackeys went
out to get Bonyongwe upon receipt of flawed information that he sympathized
with Makoni in the run-up to the March 29 elections. This prompted an
unprecedented declaration of loyalty to Mugabe by the otherwise reclusive
intelligence boss prior to last month’s elections.

However,
Bonyongwe’s woes are far from over as it emerged that Gono last week
splurged on an S-Class Mercedes Benz and a Toyota Landcruiser SUV for State
Security minister Didymus Mutasa to ensure that he “keeps tabs” and reins on
the beleaguered Bonyongwe, in case he hits back by commissioning adverse
reports on the corrupt Gono and other shadowy characters in
government.

Meanwhile, Mugabe and his inner circle cohorts are said
to be quietly plundering the economy, in case of an outright reversal of
their fortunes. Like any leaders of a despotic clique gasping for breath,
Gono is said to be participating in a looting spree.

Meanwhile, it
has become increasingly clear that Mugabe and his group have no clear
strategy for victory in any election with Tsvangirai. They are hoping,
though, that the violence that they are preparing to unleash on the
electorate, vote-buying and other clandestine strategies will deliver
victory to the 84-year old ruler.

There is increasing evidence that
the run-off will be held in the violent atmosphere of the 2000 and 2005
election campaigns, which were remarkable for their widespread intimidation
and disregard for the rule of law.

Preparing for the Worst in Zimbabwe

Washington Post

Opposition Faces
Violent Reprisals After Election Wins

Washington Post Foreign
ServiceThursday, April 10, 2008; Page A10

MARONDERA, Zimbabwe, April
9 -- The crimson begins at the collar. Its dried, crusty path shows where
blood flowed from the head of opposition candidate Felix Muzambi onto his
shoulders, down his front and past every one of his buttons. The white Van
Heusen dress shirt now carries the indelible stain of politics,
Zimbabwe-style.

The beating at the hands of ruling party youths happened
in February, said Muzambi, 64, a taxidermist and grandfather. That was about
six weeks before the historic March 29 election that was notable for its
relative peacefulness -- compared to votes in previous years -- and for the
first-round defeat of President Robert Mugabe and his party.Heading into
a second and decisive round of voting for the presidency, signs abound that
the kind of violence visited on Muzambi is spreading across the country as
Mugabe resorts to the tools he has used to stay in power for 28 years. This
town alone has a notorious history of whippings, abductions and torture.
Secret police took pliers to Muzambi's genitals last year, he said, turning
away and wincing.

He said the worst is still ahead.

"We're in
trouble," said Muzambi, who won a seat on Marondera's council, a humiliating
loss for Mugabe's party, which has controlled this town since Zimbabwe's
birth in 1980. "Everybody is scared because they know he kills."

Reports
of vicious attacks and intimidation have proliferated in Marondera since the
vote 11 days ago. An opposition activist was pummeled by ruling party youths
and threatened with a knife Tuesday night, several of his friends said. Two
other opposition supporters, in a rural area outside town, were whipped so
badly they ended up in the hospital, a party official said.

Voting
results written on blue pieces of paper outside several polling stations
have mysteriously been erased. Some of the few still visible were posted
behind the windows of a locked building, the R. G. Mugabe Primary School,
revealing the depth of his humiliation here: Tsvangirai 248, Mugabe
79.

At two other polling stations where results had been rubbed away,
the faint imprints suggested similar margins of defeat for the president and
his party.

Regional diplomatic efforts to resolve the political
stalemate accelerated Wednesday with a call by Zambian President Levy
Mwanawasa for an emergency meeting of southern African heads of state
Saturday. The group, which has publicly defended Mugabe in the past, is
widely seen as having more influence over him than Western critics such as
Britain and the United States.

Meanwhile, the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change, or MDC, which has rarely been involved in violence,
continued pressing its court case to force the electoral commission to
release results from the presidential vote. Independent monitors and
officials from both parties say Mugabe lost, though they disagree over
whether the margin required a runoff. A runoff is triggered if no candidate
receives more than 50 percent of the vote.

Independent candidate Simba
Makoni, who by most accounts finished a distant third behind opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Mugabe, also demanded the results Wednesday.
"Our votes are not the property of anyone," Makoni said at a news conference
in Harare, the capital. "It is our right, as citizens, to get the final
results without further delay."

Yet as the fight over results sharpens,
the election has already moved into a decidedly anxious new phase out in
Zimbabwe's hinterlands, especially in towns such as Marondera, where former
Mugabe strongholds produced opposition landslides. The posting of results
outside polling stations, a widely praised innovation of this election, has
taken on a sinister cast in recent days; they amount to a road map for
anyone inclined to punish neighborhoods that strayed from the party's
control.

Ruling party officials denied they were using violence to win
the runoff.

"I've not heard anything of that sort, but I'm sure that if
there is anything like that, the police have the capacity to handle it,"
said Didymus Mutasa, national security minister.

Yet Zimbabweans see
the police as Mugabe's enforcers, not impartial arbiters of peace and
justice.

Last October, Carlos Mudzongo, 35, wore an opposition T-shirt
into a rural area and was assaulted by five ruling party youths, he said.
When he sought help from the police, three officers beat him with
broomsticks and electrical cords, he said. Such stories are common
here.

Ruling party youths, dressed in white T-shirts bearing the logo and
acronym of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or
ZANU-PF, have begun assembling outside the houses of opposition activists
and singing a warning in Shona that translates as, "The war has
come."

On Wednesday morning, they stopped outside the house of Leonard
Mandaza, 59, an opposition candidate who also won a seat on Marondera's town
council. He said that most of the youths appeared to be from out of town,
but one was from Marondera and showed the others where to focus their
energies. Mandaza said he expected more visits soon.

"They will act
at night," he said.

"I will fight like a dog, teeth and legs," he added
grimly. "If they want war, then we can retaliate."

The hard words
signal a dramatic shift in mood since the first days after the election,
when even some of Mugabe's closest associates were urging him to step down.
Since then, it has become clear that he has decided to fight, with the
support of the military, police, party youths and veterans of the nation's
liberation war who have renewed their assault on white-owned commercial
farms after several years of relative quiet.

In Marondera, nearly every
party activist has a story of beatings or torture. They have been roused by
police in the middle of the night. Their children have been taunted and in
some cases abducted. Several say they fear to venture outside after
dark.

Opposition activist Diamond Tenfara, 50, a retired accountant, said
he has been abducted by the secret police so many times that he can no
longer count the episodes. But he recalled the most memorable form of
torture used on him: He was stripped naked, then forced to sit on a chair
wired with electrodes.

"It was hot everywhere," Tenfara
said.

Muzambi, who keeps his bloodied shirt folded in a bedroom closet in
hopes of some day testifying against his attackers in court, said the
assault was not the most frightening day of this election season. That came
two weeks later, when the secret police pulled up outside his house in three
pickup trucks. By the time he found his way outside, they had handcuffed and
bundled off his brother, 37, and his son, 32.

The two emerged from
custody two days later, their bodies battered, Muzambi said. His son had a
broken left arm; his brother a broken right thigh bone.

With more attacks
being chronicled every day, and with a purge underway against some officials
on the electoral commission, Muzambi said he figures the runoff has already
been lost. Or rather, stolen by a ruling party determined to win.

"If
they burn down two houses," he said, people "won't vote MDC again. They will
run."

Africa's double jeopardy

The Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:01am BST
10/04/2008

One gained independence with a diversified
economy, good infrastructure and promising potential for growth. The other
was considered among the best examples of post-colonial development. But the
refusal of two stubborn old men to cede power - or of their entourages to
let them - has ruined the reputation of both.

In Zimbabwe,
under Robert Mugabe, that process has accelerated over the past eight years,
reducing the country to a wreck. In Kenya, under Mwai Kibaki, it has lasted
only a few months.

In each case, a rigged election has led to an
impasse from which only outside intervention offers hope, albeit slim, of
escape.

Over Zimbabwe, the key external players are South Africa
and its fellow members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Here, there are signs that Mr Mugabe's neighbours are waking up to the
enormity of his handling of the presidential poll. Jacob Zuma, the head of
the ruling ANC and the frontrunner to succeed Thabo Mbeki, has criticised
Zimbabwe's electoral commission for delaying publication of the
results.

Meanwhile, the SADC's chairman, President Levy Mwanawasa
of Zambia, has called an emergency summit in Lusaka on
Saturday.

Kenya has accepted outside mediation by Kofi Annan, the
former United Nations secretary general. But the power-sharing agreement
reached in February has yet to be implemented and there has been an ominous
recurrence of rioting.

Here, pressure for a settlement has come
mainly from America and the EU; they have still to persuade Mr Kibaki to
yield key ministerial portfolios to the opposition under Raila
Odinga.

Two political elites who have dragged their countries down
through clinging to office by hook or by crook. Outside intervention which
has yet to be effective and, in the case of Zimbabwe, has been scandalously
feeble. These failures are sullying the name of Africa as a whole.

ŘOf the 12 million population 80% remain unemployed, nearly 5 million
people live in diaspora around the world. Approximately 3500 people die of
HIV/AIDS a week.

ŘZimbabwe currently has the world’s highest inflation rate of a 150,000
percent and one of the lowest life expectancies rates where men are expected to
live to just 37 years while women’s life expectancy is just 34 years
old.

ŘZimbabwe’s orphans of which there are approximately 1.2 million are at
extreme risk themselves.

ŘSo-called independent observers selectively chosen by the regime shall no
doubt declare elections free and fair on this occasion as has been the case
throughout past elections. With pre-determined results in terms of ballot
rigging with the collusion of the armed forces and so-called war veterans the
order of the day.

In
conclusion has the tide finally turned sufficiently for Zimbabweans within the
armed forces to finally realize that they cannot continue to stem the tide of
freedom of which they supposedly claim to have fought and died for during the
so-called liberation struggle?